THE LAST TITANS

A rare grandiloquent title that is not hyperbole.

Both Churchill and de Gaulle began as soldiers and authors, notes Vinen, professor of history at King’s College London and author of 1968: Radical Protest and Its Enemies (2018). Ever the hero of his own bestsellers, the charismatic Churchill (1874-1965) never lost an adolescent love of war but left the army for politics in 1899, becoming a power in Britain’s cabinet before World War I until 1931, when, a hard-line imperialist, he opposed granting India limited independence and resigned. Even as a failure, he was world-famous. A World War I hero, de Gaulle (1890-1970) found relief in becoming a military intellectual. Both denounced the 1938 Munich Agreement that allowed the Nazi takeover of the Sudetenland. Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1940, the day Germany invaded France. An undersecretary of defense, de Gaulle opposed France’s surrender, flew to London on June 17, and delivered his famous radio address to France the following day, declaring, “The flame of French resistance must not and will not go out.” Churchill encouraged De Gaulle’s appeals but grew exasperated at his self-importance. Franklin D. Roosevelt never liked the Frenchman. Vinen reminds readers that both nations maintained diplomatic relations with Vichy France until late in 1942, hoping in vain that chief of state Philippe Pétain would turn against the Nazis. The conservative Churchill had little interest in social reform, so his 1945 electoral defeat should have come as no surprise. The remainder of his life was an anticlimax. His Nobel-winning World War II history is not highly regarded by scholars, and a second term as prime minister was not successful. Unhappy with postwar politics, De Gaulle retired but returned in 1958 as civil war threatened over the Algerian rebellion. Remaking the constitution to his liking, with a stronger president, he served over a decade of increasing prosperity during which France assumed the leading role in Europe. “The whole of modern France,” Vinen concludes, “is a Gaullist monument.”

Familiar events, but a superb page-turner.